


Squib Wish

by rootedinsunlight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29658750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rootedinsunlight/pseuds/rootedinsunlight
Summary: In which Augusta Longbottom hopes with all her heart that Neville didn't inherit any magical ability because of what magic did to his parents. And how she reckons with keeping him safe when she finds out he did.
Relationships: Augusta Longbottom & Neville Longbottom
Kudos: 15





	Squib Wish

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: implied trauma, effects of trauma
> 
> Also: I condemn JK Rowling and her bigotry fully.

Before, Augusta remembered Alice insisting that she “felt” some magic inside of him. Augusta had found it fantastical. Alice was usually a good, practical woman that Augusta very much approved of. She had shaken her head at Alice, then, and chuckled.

After, Augusta found herself holding young Neville close to herself, pressing her ear to his heart, his cheek to hers, to see if she could feel the magic too. Wishing with all her heart that she would feel nothing but a steady heartbeat and his warm skin.

* * *

Augusta Longbottom pressed her forehead to the glass, watching the kids in the patch of grass between the two houses opposite her’s. Red-cheeked and boisterous, they were well known around the neighborhood for writing rude things in chalk on the pavement, laughing very loudly at all times of day (and night!), and throwing their football so hard that more than a few windows in the area bore the damage. If they weren’t so afraid of her, Augusta would be constantly using mending spells on all the glass fixtures outside their home, she was sure of it. The biggest girl of the group gave a hard shove to the boy next to her. Augusta pursed her lips.

“Nan?"

She whipped around quickly, brows knit in concern.

“Neville? What’s wrong?”

The child looked up at her with big, dark eyes.

“I finished the maths sheet.”

Augusta crouched to meet his eye level.

“And? Did you check your answers after, Neville?” she asked.

“Only one mistake. And I just counted backwards wrong by accident. I fixed it.”

She smiled and pat his head twice. He smiled back hopefully.

“Nan, can I—”

“I thought we’d make some warm stew together and watch a film tonight. How does that sound?” Augusta straightened and briskly began to draw the curtains on the windows closed.

“But, _Nan!_ ” Neville cried, pouting.

“No, Neville. You can _not_ go play with those…hooligans. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

Neville’s lower lip wobbled dangerously. Augusta sighed. Neville started again.

“But Nan, I’m not gonna have any friends when school starts. They’re all becoming friends now.”

Augusta leaned down and placed a hand on Neville’s shoulder. 

“They’re a danger to our neighborhood, that’s what they are.” _A danger to you._

A beat.

“Well, can I try doing some magic, then?"

Augusta stiffened immediately, her figure tense. She snatched her arm from his shoulder.

“You can’t do magic.”

It sounded like a wish in her head, but she hoped it sounded assertive in his.

Neville’s pout turned into a scowl. He crossed his arms over the t-shirt with a firetruck on it, muttered an _i-hate-you,_ and marched out of the room. Augusta stared after his retreating back and then at the empty doorway. Then she sighed and sank onto the edge of her bed. The room was decorated just as she liked it, in pink and purple with plenty of images of birds and flowers embellishing the walls. Beside the bed was a night table with a feathered lamp that Alice had pretended to find charming. There was a small wooden bird, from when Frank had taken woodshop in school. And then there was her favorite photograph in the world, in a gilded frame facing the pillow. Frank, Alice, and Neville looked up at her cheerily, her son and his wife holding ice cream cones. It was the one photo she hadn’t given to Neville to keep, and it was purely selfish. She had taken this picture, and still remembered sternly ordering them to sit still, for Frank to wipe his mouth, for Neville to stop fussing. Augusta’s sternness sent Frank and Alice into bouts of giggles, as it always did, which started Neville off too. Finally, when Neville let out a loud belch, Augusta dissolved into laughter too. Consequently, the photo was a little blurry. Frank was laughing, surprised and open-mouthed, a thin line of chocolate ice-cream over his lip. Alice’s cheek was pressed to Neville’s, and Neville kept looking on either side of him at his parents, wide-eyed. Augusta tore her eyes away from the photo and smoothed her dressing gown down. Then she lifted her wand from its folds. Her half-open bedroom door swung and clicked shut. She had turned to pull her nightgown out of the cupboard when there was sudden, furious knocking.

“Nan! Nan! Nan!”

Augusta cursed herself and rushed to open the door. Neville, teary-eyed and face blotchy, threw his arms around her and pressed his face into her thigh.

“Nevvie, I’m safe, I’m sorry, I was just going to change into my nightgown,” she murmured, stroking his hair.

“You promised you’d tell me when you lock the door,” Neville said, drawing his head back to look at her and sniffling.

“I know. I forgot. Will you forgive me?” she asked softly. Her throat hurt. He nodded into her leg, and then looked up again, his eyes full.

“I'm not mad.” 

Augusta rubbed circles into his back until his breathing evened. Then she drew him back by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes steadily.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Neville. Now, are you ready to help me with the stew?”

He nodded and brightened a little. “Can I go pick the herbs from the garden?”

Augusta got to her feet. “Absolutely.”

Neville lifted the spoon to his mouth again and flicked his tongue out to taste. Again, he squeezed his face up as the liquid burned his mouth.

“Just wait, child. Patience,” she admonished. He nodded solemnly and looked into the bowl as if the stew would tell him it was cooled. Within thirty seconds, he was testing it again. He yelped and glared at the meal. Then his face cleared, suddenly, and he turned to her.

“Nan? Isn’t there a…spell? For this?”

Augusta’s mouth became a very thin line, and Neville swallowed hard.

“Well, you don’t have to do it, I was just wondering.”

She waved her hand dismissively and pulled her wand out, pointing it at their bowls. Instantly, the steam winding its way out of them lessened. Neville’s face glowed in elation, and he didn’t take his eyes off her wand until she had put it away. They ate noisily and happily, falling into comfortable, joyful conversation. Nan wanted to know why his swimming instructor hadn’t moved him up a level and refused to believe that Neville was having trouble with the butterfly stroke (“that’s an easy one, come on, put your heart into it”). Neville had been gifted a new set of watercolors from Andromeda Tonks, who was always gifting him things, and he was working on drawing the herbs in their garden. He began chattering incessantly about the herbs, and about which one his mother would like a drawing of.

“Yes, yes, I think she’d love the rosemary, dear..” Augusta said absentmindedly, her mind elsewhere. Neville was content to continue without a rapt audience.

“And the other day, when I saw Rupert, he made fun of me.”

Augusta was pulled back to reality.

“What? What happened?”

Neville shifted uncomfortably and avoided eye contact.

“Well, it was no big deal, Nan. Really.”

Augusta narrowed her eyes.

“Okay, well. He said that I’m a Squib, and that I should be embarrassed. That Mum and Dad wouldn’t have wanted that. And he tried to put a spell on me.”

Augusta prodded at a piece of tofu with her fork, her chest a rubber band. Neville peered up at her.

“Well, is that true?”

Augusta’s nostrils flared and she glared at her grandson. “What do you mean, is that _true_? Have I taught you nothing, boy? What did you say back to him? Did you fight back?”

Neville stared glumly back at her, eyes wide. Then he shook his head.

Augusta exhaled hard and shook her head slowly too. She felt very exhausted all of a sudden. Shoulders slumped, they ate in silence for some time before Augusta spoke again.

“Just because you might – just because you are a Squib, all it means is that you’re a lot better off, Nevvie. A lot safer.” The last word was a whisper. Neville nodded at his grandmother. “And your mum and dad would rather you be safe.”

Augusta didn’t know if that was really true. If Frank and Alice would have preferred he be a Squib if it put him out of harm’s way. They had loved Neville to pieces, but they were also the bravest people she had known. _And where did that get them?_ a bitter voice in her head sniped. The pain of the attack had been reshaped and rewritten a dozen times in the years since, but whenever she thought of losing her Neville, it felt as if it was the very day she had gotten the news about Frank and Alice.

What Augusta knew to be true was that she could not lose Neville. So she spent every day with a hushed, fervent prayer running through her that begged any power or fate in existence to accept it. _Let him be a Squib,_ she pleaded.

* * *

The lights in her bedroom were off. Augusta sank to the floor, her back against the edge of her bed. She looked at her hands, at the ground, at the walls around her. Nothing made sense. The voices from the kitchen spun, the words of her dinner guests garbled. Neville was in his room, tucked into bed. Plasters on his elbows and his knees, as if he had fallen off a bike. Not as if he had been dropped out of the window.

It was somewhat common in her family to do such things, whether they were for the purpose of ascertaining magical ability or not. Augusta faintly remembered an aunt propping her five-year old self up on a high wall and conjuring some snakes on the ground, daring Augusta to jump past them and onto the floor. She had never minded these pranks so much. Until Algie had dropped Neville out of the window, and Neville had _bounced._

The family had erupted into cheers and hoots at seeing this, clapping Augusta on the back. Augusta was still for a moment, numb, before she came to her senses, shrieked and sprinted outside, collecting a sobbing Neville into her arms. He had cried into her shoulder, snot all over her blouse, for a few minutes. Then he pulled back to look her in the eyes, a wondrous expression spreading across his face.

“I’ve got magic in me, don’t I?” Neville whispered. The night sky around them was dark and unyielding.

Augusta stretched her legs out on the carpet of her room now. Nightmarish visions came to her unbidden. Her greatest fears. Neville, facing Voldemort, shaking in fear. Neville, suspended in the air in a garish position, helpless. Neville, in a hospital bed, unable to remember who she was. A ragged sob tore out of Augusta’s chest. She pressed her fists to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.

In the minutes that followed, Augusta felt something harden within her. A resolve. Augusta’s reality had not changed completely. This was still true: she could not lose her Neville. Neville had to be tougher, braver, the best wizard of his generation. He had to make it to Hogwarts in four years. If Voldemort came back, Neville would have to face him with his back straight and his chin high.

A tiny knock came at her door, which was ever-so-slightly ajar. Augusta pushed herself to her feet and ran her hands over her face, hoping she didn’t look as unkempt as she felt.

“Come in,” she said, her voice clear.

Neville stepped through the door and flicked the light switch on. His face was teary.

“Nan, I’m having nightmares. Can I go lay in your bed for a bit until you get sleepy? Or until everyone else leaves?” Neville asked, sniffling. He was already walking towards her mattress.

Augusta’s expression softened and she began to say yes. Then she stopped herself.

“No.” Augusta answered. Neville stopped and looked up at her, confused. Stooping, she kissed the top of Neville’s head. “Neville, go sleep in your own bed. You have to be brave.”

Neville looked gloomily back at her, his small face looking dangerously close to tears again. She ushered him to the door, swallowing her guilt and thinking of safety. Then she watched him pad up the stairs in his pajamas, her throat tight. The child stopped at the top step, turning back to whisper a _goodnight, love you_ , even through his tears. She waved him along.

“Love you too.” Augusta whispered into the hallway, long after the boy had gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!!


End file.
